WASHINGTON -- John Negroponte, who in 2005 became the first director of national intelligence, overseeing the 16 U.S. spy agencies, will give up that job to become deputy secretary of state, U.S. officials said Wednesday evening.

A veteran diplomat and former ambassador to Iraq, Negroponte joined the newly created agency at a time of growing concern over the shortcomings of U.S. intelligence. He would be returning to more familiar terrain by moving to the No. 2 diplomatic post, vacant since July.

A replacement for Negroponte has not been selected, a U.S. official said. But there was speculation that the post could go to J. Michael McConnell, a retired vice admiral who headed the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1996. Attempts to reach McConnell, now a senior vice president at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, were unsuccessful.

Negroponte's office declined comment on why the director would cut short his service and move to a lower-ranking position. But people close to the director, who spent 37 years as a foreign service officer, said they believe he was not happy trying to better integrate sometimes-rivalrous organizations in a specialty outside his own.

Some U.S. officials expressed surprise at the news, first reported by NBC, especially because Negroponte only last month seemed to have silenced rumors that he might be taking the State Department job. In an interview with C-SPAN, Negroponte said he expected to remain in his current post until the end of President Bush's term.

"I visualize staying with it through the end of this administration," he said.

Negroponte became director of national intelligence when some people were questioning the need for a single director for all the intelligence agencies. Among the critics was former CIA Director Robert Gates, the new defense secretary.

To some, it seemed curious that Negroponte would leave a job that the administration has billed as critical for national security in order to become deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

'Absolutely critical position'

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), departing chairwoman of the Senate governmental affairs committee, was a major proponent of the intelligence post. "The director of national intelligence is an absolutely critical position," she said Wednesday. "I'm disappointed that Negroponte would leave this critical position when it's still in its infancy. There are a number of people who could ably serve as deputy secretary of state, but few who can handle the challenges" of chief of intelligence.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who also pressed for establishment of the intelligence job, said: "I'm worrying that our deficit in intelligence will not be corrected. I'm sorry Negroponte isn't completing his term because he at least understood intelligence."

Negroponte's talents will be welcome in the senior ranks of the State Department, which has been stressed by multiple simultaneous crises in the Middle East and elsewhere and has lost several top officials in recent months. Some foreign diplomats have complained recently that it has became increasingly difficult to win top-level U.S. diplomatic attention on even urgent issues, except for the top-priority items related to the Middle East.

The previous deputy secretary, Robert Zoellick, focused mostly on the issues of China, East Asia and trade. Negroponte, who served as the first postwar U.S. ambassador to Iraq before taking the intelligence post, would come to the State Department as the Bush administration formulates a new strategy for that country.

Known as a smooth, soft-spoken diplomat, Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq sought to remain largely in the background, in hopes that the outside world would view Iraq as a sovereign nation led by Iraqis. His successor, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been more willing to assert himself publicly as America's representative.

Some intelligence specialists predicted that Negroponte's departure from the intelligence post would not create great turmoil.

Mark Lowenthal, a former high-ranking CIA official, predicted that if McConnell is chosen as the replacement, the intelligence agencies will find him "very different from Negroponte. He has more background in intelligence. He comes in fresher than Negroponte--he's had the chance to see how this thing has run without being involved in it. If there are changes he'd like to make he can make them, he can come in and start with a clean slate."

"McConnell is probably more inspirational than Negroponte, and that's something people can use," Lowenthal said. "I think what's missing right now is a sense of leadership and direction. After all the community has been through in the last several years from 9/11 to Iraq to the creation of the DNI, they could use a more inspirational leader."

After joining Booz Allen, McConnell initially sought to steer clear of contracts dealing with the intelligence community, and instead focused on e-commerce and Internet security initiatives. But colleagues said he has become increasingly involved in intelligence-related contracts in recent years, and was recently approached by the Bush administration about becoming the deputy to Negroponte--a position that became open when Michael Hayden left to become CIA director. McConnell turned down the offer, but remained on the administration's radar.

Big policy shift unlikely

McConnell would not be expected to pursue any major shifts in policy from Negroponte, in part because McConnell would likely only have two years on the job before a new president is elected and a new administration in place.

If given the job, McConnell's "objective would be to try to steady the intelligence ship, to continue to have it move forward on coordination and integration, not do a lot that's going to disrupt things or try to put something in place that might not have the legs to be realized under his tenure," said John Brennan, a former senior CIA official and former head of the National Counterterrorism Center.

As for the State Department, one official said Rice and other top officials would "obviously love to have" Negroponte, who "has had about every about every kind of big job there is. His resume is pretty hard to top."

The official noted that Negroponte had been ambassador to Mexico, the Philippines and Honduras as well as Iraq. He was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before the 2003 Iraq invasion and was a deputy national security adviser during the Reagan administration.

His new position requires Senate confirmation. That is not expected to be an obstacle, even with the Democrats in control of the Senate; he won confirmation to his current job by a vote of 98-2.

Brennan said it would be natural for someone with Negroponte's background to want the deputy post at the State Department.

"Negroponte was somebody who grew up in the State Department, and the deputy secretary of state position is usually the aspiration of all officers who enter the State Department, the quintessential position," Brennan said.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

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